774 Arrests in China Over Safety

Tuesday

Oct 30, 2007 at 6:23 AM

Regulators hailed the arrests, made during a nationwide crackdown on tainted food, drugs and agricultural products, as a major step forward for consumer safety.

SHANGHAI, Oct. 29 —The Chinese government revealed today that it had arrested 774 people over the last two months as part of a nationwide crackdown on the production and sale of tainted food, drugs and agricultural products.

Government regulators hailed the arrests as a major step forward for food and drug safety, and said the “criminal suspects” were detained during nationwide inspections of thousands of restaurants, food and drug production plants and wholesale food markets.

Determined to counter accusations that it has been producing and also exporting tainted goods, China has vowed to revamp its food and drug safety regulations and to close illegal manufacturers and exporters.

In the summer, the government even executed the former head of the nation’s food and drug administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, after he was convicted of accepting bribes and failing to properly supervise food and drug companies, some of which had sold counterfeit drugs.

But the government also acknowledged today that problems remain. In its announcement, it said that this month only 82 percent of food tested in medium and large cities in China met safety standards, and nearly 30 percent of the restaurants surveyed by regulators had failed food safety inspections.

The announcement of the arrests, which was made over the weekend but was not posted on a government Web site until today, offered few details about the nature and seriousness of the food and drug safety violations involved — or, indeed, who had been arrested or the size of their businesses. The government said only that it had investigated 626 criminal cases.

The arrests came after nearly a year of high-profile recalls involving everything from tainted pet food ingredients to problem toys, and after repeated promises on the part of government regulators to crack down on tainted goods and restore confidence in the Made in China label.

As part of its effort, the government is also trying to counter widespread concerns that the quality and safety of the food and drugs sold to its own citizens is far worse than the products it exports.

In fact, China acknowledged this year that while it believes 99 percent of its food exports meet safety standards, only about 80 percent of food sold domestically has passed inspections.

Today, the government said that a four-month campaign to root out bad food and drug producers and sellers was paying dividends.

“This action of inspecting food safety demonstrates our determination, and we should make every effort to further consolidate our previous work,” Li Changjiang, the head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said, according to the statement published on the Web site. “We will carry out inspections throughout the country to safeguard our people’s living standard.”

In a separate announcement today, the Ministry of Agriculture said that it was revoking the registration of 11 highly toxic pesticides because of food safety concerns.

In several cases, the pesticides were banned from use in China, but were nonetheless manufactured in the country for export to places where their use remained legal. Government regulators said they were worried that the banned pesticides were finding their way back into the Chinese market.

The government also said this week that since July, inspectors working at Chinese ports have destroyed or recalled over 1,000 tons of fake products.

China is also working with American and European regulators to cooperate on product safety and to put into place new methods to detect harmful products.

The government has called this a “special battle” to save the Made in China label.

The problems began this year, after American pet food makers recalled millions of tons of ingredients that were tainted with industrial chemicals imported from China. Later, the United States Food and Drug Administration blocked imports of some Chinese seafood, including shrimp and eel, because of recurring problems with residues of illegal chemicals, including cancer-causing substances.

Then regulators and safety inspectors around the world began turning up toxic toothpaste from China and Chinese-made toys coated in lead paint, which can be harmful if ingested by small children, leading to global recalls.

The crisis spurred calls worldwide for more stringent food safety inspection regimes and toy safety regulations. It also prompted some consumers to begin avoiding Chinese-made goods and led to calls in Congress for a ban on some Chinese imports.

Trade statistics, though, show that with few exceptions, China’s exports to the rest of the world continue to soar, including exports of toys, seafood and agricultural products.

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